Thursday, September 2, 2021

World Champs

TigerBlog begins today with a short public service announcement.

TB went Tuesday to get a basal cell skin cancer removed. The overwhelming majority of the time, such cancers are very slow moving and pose little long-term threat, other than the fact that once you've had it, you're likely to have others. 

On the other hand, left alone they can be very, very serious, even fatal. TB found out he had one during an annual dermatology check, which is something that he recommends to everyone. Most importantly, he never in a million years would have guessed that the spot on his right forearm was anything more than some sort of abrasion or something like that. It didn't look troubling in the least.

Here is what it looked like. Would you have felt like that was an issue?:

And that is your public service announcement for today. Get yourself checked by your dermatologist each year. 

From that, TB segues into something from Tuesday that was much fun, the World Championship women's hockey game between the U.S. and Canada. Princeton women's hockey was represented at the event by two players on the Canadian team, current Tiger Sarah Fillier and recent grad Claire Thompson. 

Canada would win the game 3-2 in overtime after trailing 2-0 in the first period. If that sounds familiar, it is for the two Princeton players, since they were teammates on the 2019-20 Princeton team that won the ECAC tournament championship game against Cornell 3-2 in overtime after trailing 2-0 in the first.

In fact, that ECAC final was 2-0 Cornell after the first, 2-2 after two periods and still 2-2 heading into overtime, just like the World Championship final game as well. One major difference was that the ECAC final was a full 6v6 competition. The final Tuesday night at the World Championship was 3x3, which opens the ice up tremendously. Canada's Marie-Philip Poulin ripped in the game-winner 7:22 into overtime, which is a long way to go without a goal in 3x3.

Thompson and Fillier combined for 10 points at the tournament, where Canada went unbeaten. Fillier had three goals and three assists, including an assist on the first goal of the championship game, and Thompson, a defenseman, had three assists. 

The championship was the 11th for Canada. The U.S. has won nine. No other country has ever won one. The two dominant teams have now met in the championship game 19 times in 20 tournaments.

To give you a sense of where this game ranks, consider this from the official tournament website:

It was a game as thrilling and exciting as any played between the nations in the 31-year history of women's hockey at the IIHF. 

Next up internationally are the Olympic Games, which are less than six months away now. Once again the overwhelming favorites to meet for the gold medal are Canada and the U.S.

TigerBlog wrote this about Thompson once, after seeing her play in the 2018 season: 

TigerBlog knows very little about hockey, though he could tell from watching it that No. 4 on Princeton was very, very good. 

It turned out that No. 4 was Thompson, who was a two-time All-ECAC pick, including a first-team selection as a junior. As for Fillier, her bio on goprincetontigers.com includes no fewer than 17 individual awards in just her first two seasons at Princeton. Now the two Princetonians are world champions, with an eye on adding Olympic medals to that in early 2022.

Oh, and this is a good spot to mention that their head coach at Princeton, Cara Morey, spent some time working with the Philadelphia Flyers at their training camp recently.

It's an impressive moment. For one, it's not something that would have flown a few years ago, a woman coach at a major professional team's training camp. Also, it's a statement on Morey as a coach and the state of the program she runs at Princeton. 

Either way, it's a lot more than just the common team colors between the two.

And also either way, it's been a pretty good few days for the Princeton women's hockey program.

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